AI Shopping Spree — Apple Leads Charge with 32 Startup Acquisitions in 2023 (2024)

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AI Shopping Spree — Apple Leads Charge with 32 Startup Acquisitions in 2023? ›

AI Shopping Spree — Apple Leads Charge with 32 Startup Acquisitions in 2023. Apple acquired WaveOne for its video compression technology, along with other startups like Emotient, Laserlike, Drive.AI, and AI. Music, with some technologies integrated into Apple devices.

I also write about marketing and AI. Apple acquired an estimated 32 AI companies in 2023. That's a lot. 👉 They gobbled up more AI companies last year than Google and Meta, though primarily through early-stage startup acquisitions.

The company quietly acquired Paris-based AI startup Datakalab in December, according to a report from French business magazine Challenges. The deal reportedly closed on December 17, 2023, but has not been previously reported. Apple did not immediately reply to Fast Company's request for comment about the report.

Apple has been buying more and more startups in order to fold their respective tech advancements, research, and talent into its operations. In 2023, Apple was the leader among its competitors in AI acquisition, taking over as many as 32 AI startups.

THE HIGHEST VALUED COMPANIES ON THE 2024 AI 50

The three most valuable companies — OpenAI ($86 billion), Databricks ($43 billion) and Anthropic ($18.4 billion, as Forbes reported) — were all awarded a step up in price over the past 12 months.

Apple's top strictly-AI deal was its $200 million purchase of Xnor.ai, a Seattle startup focused on AI-powered image recognition tools, in 2020.

Who leads AI at Apple? John Giannandrea steers the ship as Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

Further, Microsoft is the biggest investor in startup OpenAI, the leader in generative AI training models. The top artificial intelligence stocks to buy span chipmakers, software companies, cloud computing service providers and technology giants that utilize AI tools in many applications.

This AI won't likely be a standalone profit center for Apple, but it would further drive iPhone adoption and pull forward iPhone upgrade cycles. One final big advantage for Apple in AI is that it will be a capex-light strategy.

For now, though, the shape of the company's AI ambitions remain unclear. And Apple is late to the party while rivals Microsoft, Amazon and Meta spend billions of dollars to support AI infrastructure.

Is Siri considered AI? ›

Are Alexa and Siri considered AI? Yes. Alexa and Siri are applications powered by artificial intelligence.

Google Search is a form of narrow AI, as is predictive analytics, or virtual assistants.

Lately, there's been a big problem in the world of AI startups: a lot of them are failing. This is surprising because these companies were once seen as the future of technology and had a lot of money invested in them. But now, many are running into trouble. 90% of new startups don't work out.

Apple has stepped up its foray into artificial intelligence (AI) by acquiring Datakalab, a Paris-based AI tech startup. The acquisition, finalized on Dec. 17, was quietly noted in a filing with the European Commission and reported by French media.

Apple is taking a hybrid approach to AI investments

The biggest AI news, however, is something Cook said about Apple's CapEx expenditures, which are funds spent on fixed assets, like servers and data centers, real estate and more.

Number of AI Companies in 2024

According to the latest available data, there are around 67,200 artificial intelligence companies. A large percentage of AI companies and startups are based in the United States (approximately 25%).

As of December 2022, Baidu was the largest owner of active machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) patent families worldwide with 13,993 active patent families owned.